On 2012-11-01, at 1:18 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Incidentally, for 200 years the vast majority of those who have been the
> cutting edge of mass movements or revolutions were those usually categorized
> as "aristocracy of labor." Politics, meaning the politics of mass movements,
> require free time. Only at late stages of such movements do the "less
> privileged" get incorporate into the struggle.
Yes, and a good 2006 essay by Charles Post in Solidarity called "The Myth of the Labor Artistocracy" addressed this point.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/129
A few excerpts:
"Despite its intellectual pedigree and longevity, the labor aristocracy thesis is not a theoretically rigorous or factually realistic explanation of working-class reformism or conservatism.
[…]
"Whatever benefits all workers in the global North reap from imperialist investment in the global South are clearly outweighed by the deleterious effects of the expansion of capitalist production on a world scale. This is especially clear today, in the era of neoliberal "globalization."
"Although industry is clearly not "footloose and fancy free" as some theorists of globalization claim - moving from one country to another in search for the cheapest labor(27) - the removal of various legal and judicial obstacles to the free movement of capital has sharpened competition among workers internationally, to the detriment of workers in both the global North and South.
"The mere threat of moving production "off-shore," even if the vast majority of industrial investment remains within the advanced capitalist societies, is often sufficient to force cuts in wages and benefits, the dismantling of work rules and the creation of multi-tiered workforces in the United States and other industrialized countries. Neoliberalism's deepening of the process of primitive accumulation of capital - the forcible expropriation of peasants from the land in Africa, Asia and Latin America - has created a growing global reserve army of labor competing for dwindling numbers of fulltime, secure and relatively well paid jobs across the world.
"Put simply, the sharpening competition among workers internationally more than offsets the "benefits" of imperialism for workers in the global North.
[…]
"The higher wages that workers in unionized capital-intensive industries enjoy are not gained at the expense of lower paid workers, either at home or abroad. Instead, the lower unit costs of these industries make it possible for these capitals to pay higher than average wages. As we have seen over the last thirty years, however, only effective worker organization can secure and defend these higher than average wages.
[…]
"A more systematic examination of the history of workers' struggles in the global North in the past century...does not bear out the claim that well paid workers are generally reformist or conservative, while poorly paid workers are more revolutionary or radical.
"The most important counter-example is the Russian working class in the early 20th century. The backbone of Lenin's Bolsheviks (something he was most definitely aware of) were the best paid industrial workers in the Russian cities - skilled machinists in the largest factories. Lower paid workers, such as the predominantly female textile workers, were generally either unorganized or apolitical (until the beginnings of the revolution) or supported the reformist Mensheviks.(1)
"In fact the mass base of the left, antiwar wing of the pre-First World War socialist parties and of the postwar revolutionary Communist parties were relatively well paid workers in the large metalworking industries. These workers led militant struggles against speedup and deskilling that became political struggles against conscription and the war.
"German Communism became a mass movement when tens of thousands of well paid metal workers left the Independent Socialists and joined the Communists in 1921. The French and Italian Communists also became mass parties through the recruitment of thousands of machinists who led the mass strikes of the postwar period. These highly paid workers were also overrepresented in the smaller Communist parties of the United States and Britain.(2)
"Well paid, although generally deskilled, workers in large scale industry continued to play a leading role in mass upsurges throughout the 20th century. During the CIO upsurge during the 1930s, relatively well paid workers in the U.S. auto, steel, rubber and other mass production industries, often with skilled industrial workers in the lead, spearheaded the creation of industrial unions that united skilled and unskilled, highly paid and poorly paid. Well paid and skilled workers were, again, over represented in radical and revolutionary organizations in the United States during the 1930s.(3)
"Well paid workers were also in the vanguard of proto-revolutionary mass struggles in France (1968), Italy (1968-69), Britain (1967-75), and Portugal (1974-75). Relatively "aristocratic" workers in trucking, auto, telecommunications, public education and the postal service were at the center of the unofficial, wildcat strikes that shook U.S. industry between 1965 and 1975.
"In France in 1995, well paid workers in telecommunications, public transport, postal, health care and education led the public sector strikes that mounted the first successful workers' struggles against neoliberalism…"